Content creation can feel like a never-ending treadmill. As soon as one piece is published, your content marketing team has already set to work on the next 10 ideas.
I get it — content is the cornerstone of any marketing strategy.
But the content production treadmill creates a slippery descent into mass-producing content that no one sees or engages with. If you solely focus on churning out new pieces, you risk diluting the quality of your work.
When it comes to delivering a content marketing strategy that converts, simply increasing production is the incorrect approach.
Instead, make your existing content work smarter. Content repurposing can turn the speed of your content treadmill from an exhausting 10-mph sprint to a much more manageable 5-mph recovery walk — all while letting you reap the benefits of extending the value of your best content.
Read on to learn:
- What is content repurposing?
- Content formats for repurposing
- Why should you repurpose content?
- Which content pieces should you repurpose?
- How to repurpose content
- Content repurposing examples
- Content repurposing tools
What is content repurposing?
Content repurposing is the act of recreating content in different formats. You take the same information and convert it into a new concept for a different content channel.
For example, you could craft a series of blog posts around your most popular webinar topic, embedding clips from the webinar into your blog to give it an additional interactive element. Or, you might take a podcast and clip it into small sound bites, then publish them across your social media channels.
Content formats for repurposing
Almost any type of content can be recreated into a different format. However, success lies in identifying the best repurposing opportunities.
Here are a few of the content types you can transform your best-performing pieces into:
- Blog post (round-up, Q&A, interview, etc.)
- Case study
- Online course
- Data chart
- Quote graphic
- eBook
- Educational email series
- Email newsletter
- Forum answers
- Guest post
- Infographic
- Podcast
- Social media clip
- Twitter thread
- Instagram carousel
- Video snippet and teaser
- Webinar
- Downloadable slide deck
- Whitepaper
- Industry report
Why should you repurpose content?
The benefits of repurposing content stretch far beyond helping get you off the content production treadmill.
1) Save time
Content repurposing is an effective way to amplify the value of previous content while cutting back on production time and effort. Rather than reinventing the wheel with something new, find high-performing existing content pieces you can quickly spin into new formats.
2) Create a robust content bank
By reducing production time, repurposed pieces also feed your content bank. You’ll have a stream of content ready to publish with minimal up-front effort. Actively analyze your existing content for repurposing opportunities to build your content bank.
3) Develop a consistent publishing frequency
Feeding your content bank helps you maintain a high-caliber publishing frequency without compromising on quality. Crafting new content requires significant planning and research. Repurposing content, however, lets you elevate existing pieces and optimize them for new content formats and channels.
4) Expand content visibility
Content repurposing is a no-brainer activity if you want to create content that connects with relevant prospects across multiple platforms. It expands the reach of your marketing efforts and helps attract even more eyes to your pieces.
Plus, it can help you keep up with your audience’s content demands. A 2021 survey by Contently found 80% of people read, watched, or listened to a piece of branded content in the past year. Different people are drawn to different types of content, so leveraging new formats will help you reach more people.
5) Reinforce your message
There’s a “rule of seven” in the marketing world that states people need to see something seven times before they take action. This well-known guideline highlights the importance of reinforcing your message.
Repurposing content lets you reiterate your brand message, bringing your audience closer to taking action. The more you repeat your message, the more strongly your brand will align with that messaging.
6) Improve SEO performance
Content repurposing can be a great tactic to improve your SEO performance.
While social media doesn’t directly impact organic rankings, it can still help them. Social media shares of your articles could act as trust signals for your content by expanding its distribution and exposure.
Repurposing content as guest posts on other reputable sites in your industry, for example, can increase the number of backlinks you receive. Backlinks play an important role in SEO, so, the more quality, relevant backlinks you receive, the more trustworthy Google will deem your content.
It also enables you to break down long-form content into smaller, more detailed articles to create a hub and spoke content model.
The hub and spoke model organizes your on-site content topically; rather than having one deep-dive article, you produce a series of “spoke” posts connected via internal links. These posts connect to a “hub” page that covers the topic on a broad level. This structure can improve keyword rankings and help Google better understand your information architecture for SEO.
7) Increase brand familiarity
Repurposed content positions you as an authority figure by highlighting your profile across multiple mediums. As you increase content distribution with repurposing, people will recognize your brand as the go-to source for your chosen topic.
Which content pieces should you repurpose?
While I can easily expound upon the powers of repurposing content, that doesn’t mean every piece should be reused.
Almost any content can be repurposed — blogs, videos, podcasts, social media posts, emails, you name it. But repurposing any and all content adds more to your plate than one team can realistically handle. Worse, it’ll dilute the impact of your most powerful pieces.
Instead, focus on repurposing your most valuable content.
Prioritize these content types for reproduction:
- Evergreen content
- High-performing content
- New data
1) Evergreen content
Evergreen content is any that remains relevant long past its publication date, regardless of current events.
This type is based on topics that remain relatively unchanged, such as how to save money, wedding checklists, or business tips for new entrepreneurs. While the information in these pieces may need minor updates over the years, they should remain largely unchanged.
Repurposing evergreen content brings timeless content back to the forefront of your content strategy, saving you the time and effort it takes to formulate new content from scratch.
Reusing old, evergreen content can also attract more eyes to the original pieces and strengthen your authority on the topic.
Evergreen content is the gift that keeps on giving, so look out for opportunities to syndicate evergreen pieces with repurposing.
2) High-performing content
Repurpose your best-performing content to maximize its impact. High-performing content could include webinars that earn outstanding attendance and feedback, blog posts with high visitor rates and reshares, and social media posts with a stream of comments and likes.
Measure content KPIs and track performance so you can easily spot high-performing pieces. Once you’ve found your hero content pieces, repurpose them for new content formats and channels. If it’s performing well on one channel, it’ll likely perform just as well in other formats.
High-performing content is a clear indicator that your audience connects with what you’ve shared. Repurposing those pieces reinforces your messaging and extends the lifespan of popular topics. Anyone who missed the original content piece can still benefit from the altered versions. Plus, it can draw eyes back to the original content, further increasing reach and performance.
3) New data
In addition to evergreen and high-performing content, consider repurposing new ideas or original data that isn’t yet available elsewhere. This increases your likelihood of being cited as a source or quoted by others talking about the same topic.
For example, imagine you ran an industry study on the state of product marketing and gathered new data on how consumers prefer to interact with different user interfaces. You might go over the study results in a webinar, write a blog with insights and takeaways, and publish the study findings in a downloadable whitepaper.
As your new statistics spread, you can expect others writing about changing consumer UI preferences to link to one of your content pieces as a resource.
Tip: Build repurposing into your existing process
Content repurposing doesn’t have to be reserved for content that’s already been published. Rather than reactively generating repurposed content, switch to an active content repurposing approach.
This method builds the repurposing process into the initial content production process for select pieces. At the same time as publishing the main content piece (e.g., a blog post), you also publish or schedule the supporting repurposed pieces (e.g., Twitter thread, YouTube video, or email newsletter). This means the repurposed content is already front loaded and ready to share with your audience.
How to repurpose content: A guide to increasing content ROI
Now that you understand why repurposed content is important and which pieces you should prioritize, let’s dive deeper into some of the ways you can transform existing content into new pieces.
Kickstart your repurposed content engine with these ideas for spinning new and exciting content for your audience.
Expand listicles into individual content pieces
Listicles are articles formatted in a list style for easy consumption, covering multiple points at once. However, this style also means they often only scratch the surface of each point.
Take one of your popular listicles and transform each list item into individual blog articles. Converting listicles into individual articles lets you dive deeper into the main topic. You’ll go from one roundup of 10 topics to an entire topic cluster made up of multiple articles.
The best part about turning listicles into separate content pieces is you’ve already done most of the research for the original list. So, crafting each new content piece should take you less time than creating a new blog article.
Group a collection of blog posts into an eBook
If you have a business blog, chances are you’ve written numerous posts on related topics. This collection of connected blog posts could easily turn into a valuable eBook for your audience.
Using the hub and spoke content strategy, any “hub” blog posts would serve as the chapters for your eBook. The “spoke” articles would then make up sections within those chapters. Organize your eBook so it flows logically from one chapter to the next, rather than simply dumping the articles into one large document.
Before pulling all of your blog articles into an eBook, check which ones are the most popular by reviewing each article’s visits and interactions. Then, head to the comments section to find additional information, topics, or queries you could cover in your eBook to increase its value.
Avoid turning all your blog posts into an eBook; think carefully about which ones you should use. Creating a laser-focused eBook will be far more effective than trying to cover everything. Plus, you could produce multiple eBooks from blog posts you’ve already written on a variety of topics, problems, or audience needs.
Turn a whitepaper into a webinar
Whitepapers, or research reports, are rich content pieces to maximize. They’re an in-depth analysis of an industry problem or topic that can build your credibility in that niche and become a go-to content piece for many others.
A webinar is a great way to turn detailed whitepaper findings into digestible, engaging content. The webinar can then be used as a sales, prospecting, or marketing tool.
Take your whitepaper findings and transform them into an engaging 30- to 45-minute webinar by summarizing the key points from your research. Pull in additional research or real-life examples to back up your findings and illustrate the problem or topic of the webinar.
Then, make the webinar available on demand to feed your content bank. Having a Q&A segment at the end of the session could also inspire new content ideas to support your existing content.
Use reports to create social media posts
Research reports are filled with insightful data. If you’ve conducted a research report for your brand, pul